Black Market Auction House Items
As a followup to yesterday's post, these are the items we have come across on the Black Market Auction House so far. Mounts seem to start at 20,000 gold, Armor at 10,000 gold, Pets at 10,000 gold, and Misc items at 10,000 - 15,000 gold.

The auctions last for 24 hours or more and the current bid cap is 214,748 gold. This cap could be increased in the future, just like the gold limit was increased. After winning, another item is not added to the auction house immediately. The number of items that are up for auction is not the same across all servers. There is no way to tell if these are placeholder items or not, so please wait for an official announcement before providing feedback!

Diablo III Information Recap
With a little over one day to go, now is the best time to catch up on all the information out there about Diablo III that you might have missed! Our friends over at Diablofans have been hard at work putting this massive recap together. Even if you know all about the game, there can easily be Blizzcon videos, trailers, pictures or many other things you may not have seen or have forgotten about!

Keep in mind this could be a bit of a spoiler to some. For example the final boss of the game was announced last year in an official interview. Information like that is placed without spoiler warnings. Monster Affixes is also listed in the Monster section. Other than that, any spoilers require you to click on a picture to see.

Diablo III - The Classes
Diablo III has only one returning class type - the Barbarian. The other four are new to Diablo III. Click the pictures below to get loads of information on each, such as facts, lore, rune skills, and other videos!

Diablo III - The Followers
The Followers are companions to the player which help him in combat with different skills and buffs. In their article you can find details about their stats, equipment, dialogue and videos for each.

Diablo III - The World
Same as the previous game, Diablo III will have 4 acts. The worlds are randomized just as Diablo II was with the exception of towns and major quest locations. Clicking on the areas will give you information on acts, locations, and level generation. Monsters will give you what we currently know about monsters, affixes and bosses. Quests will explain Blizzard's intentions with the questing system and give a summery of all known quests so far.

Diablo III - Items and the Auction House
Diablo III introduces a feature which hasn't been explored much in the gaming world - a Real Money Auction house, where you can buy and sell items from the game for real currency. Apart from that is a standard Gold Auction House. They have also included a huge summary of information about the Items in the game.

Diablo III - Game systems and Modes
Diablo III has many core changes from Diablo II. Skill and Runes particularly have had many changes made quite recently, which might have confused a lot of people. This can be fixed in the Skill and Runes article. Crafting is almost entirely new to the franchise. Magic Find includes lots of information about the popular stat and the new buff called Nephalem Valor. There is also major info on Multiplayer, PvP, Difficulties and the Hardcore mode.

Diablo III - Story and Achievements
There is also a small summary of the Diablo's storyline so far, plus lots of videos of all cinematics and information about books involved with the game. Also an important note, unlike the other articles the achievements is not so much a recap, as it is a FULL LIST, so SPOILER WARNING

Quite clever if you think about it, this is possibly the first scalable gold sink in the game. That is, the amount of gold leaving the economy in the form of payments on the black market AH will be proportional to what people are willing to spend to get these rare items. Which in turn is proportional to the size of gold reserves in the economy. Which you have probably noticed has been growing exponentially year after year.

Originally Posted by greyghost

I see no problem with this at all, or this being a "now anyone can get Ashes of A'lar!!" problem... cause really, right now ANYONE can get Ashes of A'lar, provided they substantially outlevel The Eye and have 5 friends to run the raid with.

Bliz is great, Bliz is great, Bliz is great.....thats the motto then aparantly....

Well this website is largely devoted to WoW, a game that Bliz brought us and has continued to work on for many years. I'd be hard pressed to understand how Bliz isn't great for all that they have accomplished. You clearly enjoy their work. That doesn't mean that every game design they make will suit your needs and preferences, but as a whole they have done very well for themselves, and for their massive following.

I don't see a problem with the BM auction house. I do, however, think that it would be a mistake to make absolutely everything accessible, and agree that some items should be left to veterans simply as a thank you and trophy for continuing to play. I lost my veteran status when I quit wow for a couple of expansions after Vanilla, but I would be delighted to still have some collectors items from back in the day. It would be a shame if they lost their unique status.

I don't feel strongly about it, but I can see where people are coming from, but it really is too early to get so worked up about this. There is a lot of missing information, and many changes to come.

black market ah is a joke seriously look at these people who have ashes of alar and farmed it for years before getting it now you can just buy it off a auction house way to go blizzard way to fail again so basically if your a raider then yo ucan pretty much buy every rare mount in the game, the ashes of alar of bmah shud not give yo ua feat of strength since you didnt earn it you bought it, why dnt they add dance studio or something instead of this garbage of an ah

Sentences. Are. Your. Friend.

You are (with all of the other whiners) falling into the "I'm a special snowflake." syndrome --over a mount. Yet, and here's the point that you can't argue around, kudos will go to people raiding current tiers and from Armory checks (inc. date checks on Achievements). Mounts from past tiers -who cares? It's all /faceroll these days and RNG when it comes to the loot.

The Blackmarket AH exists for people with the resources. Grinds exist for people with the time. You. Both. Coexist.

It should also be mentioned that (as of yet) we have no idea of how frequent items like Ashes of Alar will appear on the Blackmarket AH. It might be a once a month thing. Secondly, with mounts becoming Battle net wide you will see a lot more 'rare' mounts flying around Azeroth --making your *pretty little snowflake* syndrome even less valid.

I'm a big supporter of gold sinks but frankly what i would like to see is blizzard just come out, get it over with, and just start legally officially selling gold. You can do it with guardian cubs, i could go out on ebay right now and spend 120 dollars on a mount and sell it for 120k. If you really want to do it it's completely legal in game so why don't they just get it over with. If they really have to say "your purchasing an item not the gold blah blah blah" Put in the blizzard store a grey item for 20 bucks that vendors for 20k. As long as prices are the same i guarantee people would by gold from bliz rather than 3rd party sellers. You are not buying anything with money that affects the actual playing of the game, just the looks of the game. The precedent has been set in online games across the internet, time for blizzard to do it to.

Personally i have mixed up feelings about this bmah...gold sink? bullshit..1 winner/auction, let`s say 100 winner/day? that`s nothing (not to mention, not everything should be omfg expensive..20-50-100k gold is nothing nowadays...) However it can boost the (ill)egal goldselling for the extremely rare and/or omfg looks kewl stuff..ofc it`s depends on player (i myself never did/shall pay for virtual money which is exist only in a really limited virtual world and basically worth less than nothing)
I think the idea is basically good, but to make rare stuff common even if it`s outdated stuff....hmm-hmm...The special snowflake syndrome is a helping sentence for the natural born losers...Not everbody is equal, that`s fking obvious and yes, if some1 devoted his/her life, time, energy and other resources to obtain something, then the rest can be jealous or start to whine but still...better to stfu (same like in the sports or basically everywhere in the real life..not everybody entitled to go for the cup and absolutely not everybody should win it...in the wow it`s a bit more simplier as more than 1 winner could be -but there is always a first one-)
But actually....we`ll see...

the difference is buying gold from blizzard would be creating gold on a server that was not there before, vrs buying gold from a web site is just trading gold from 1 player to another, the first would destroy the economy and basically make everything in wow ridiculously expensive, the 2nd is a lot more rare than you think and really doesn't effect the economy as a whole, Flasks dont go up in price when ppl buy gold.

to the point of the BM ah, all of you little whiny bastards complaining about how "ppl who have this earned it" crap need to realize that nothing along the lines of what was mentioned in the BM AH list of items is "earned" it was simply time investments. t3 is the ONLY tier that was removed from the game, does that mean it is somehow super extra awesome special? no, t2 also took work to get at the time and yet i can go right now and get it from those raids. the same goes for each and every other tier, also ALL of these tiers are now outdated and only exists now for transmog, how many ppl who actually got t3 kept it? many ppl just vendored or DE'd their shit. so blizz adding a way for a very few ppl to bid on those items 1 at a time? i really dont see how that is a problem at all. i could go farm TK a bunch and eventually i will also have an ashes, come mop i could form small groups and farm the DW drake too, hell i have seen 3 drop so far just from weekly clearing it. also all of these items will continue to be rare, its not like there will all the sudden be 2000 more ashes on each server, there 1 up for bid per auction, not a hundred, 1 and at the very least that 1 mount per day? maybe even longer, we dont know yet, but with all the multitudes of mounts being added to the game with MoP i really couldnt care less who has an ashes, and with account wide mounts i care even less than that. so just shut up and be happy that with the BM AH all the rich ass ppl who make certain AH markets overpriced might not be able to anymore, MAYBE the cost of things might become a bit more reasonable.

I'm quite sure these are not place holders or at least there will be similar items/mounts there in final version. The reason is simple and already used in the past - there needs to be gold sink hole so there's no hyper inflation. At the end of TBC Blizz released epic bags that were expensive at the time. Then in Wrath there were chopper parts that kept price at specified level. Same thing in Cata with Vial. Recently there were many more sink holes added - glyph removal dusts, transmog, reforge, void storage. All the things where gold goes into nothingness after transaction. Now this Black Market Auction House is a brilliant - Blizz can sink millions by simply posting a mount. I really like the idea because it will help to balance economy A LOT by removing surplus amount of gold.

Also this feature gives more incentive to bot, cheat, dupe and steal accounts. Great idea Blizzard!

Our guild leader got hacked about a year ago, transferred with a ton of money to another server. After the restoration, the GM wasn't supposed to, but informed our GM that the other party who was on the other end of the gold transaction would have "proper action" taken upon the account for gold buying.

A lot of bought gold is from hacked accounts, and there's no way to tell if the gold you're buying was "legitimately" obtained or hacked, and you can bet that you're going to be tracked down if you buy gold from a hacked account.

any of the ones still around are probably still around for all the wrong reasons.

Translation: If people play for reasons I don't like, they are wrong.

I know people still around that actively raid that were raiding in classic. They still love every bit of the game. I played since classic, but wasn't max level until Wrath (not playing seriously, various hiatuses e.g. Deployment) with entry level raiding then, and serious raiding all through Cata. Throughout my experiences, I have not found anything in the game I hate. The closest thing is fishing with archaeology not far off. I look at people on the forums and in other websites complaining and whining and quitting over the silliest of things. All I see are children or just adults with very little patience. Maybe some of them are actually mature, but are making a big scene about one reason to leave in order to make themselves believe they need to leave for other real reasons.

All in all, this is a wonderful game, inside and out. It saddens me that people leave for reasons other than no money, life changes, and general boredom. Leaving isn't going to force Blizzard to reverse that insignificant nerf and they aren't going to get rid of Pandaren. Seriously, people who complain about pandas are just childish.

This may come as a surprise to you, but acquiring lots and lots of gold takes effort too.

Earning gold can actually take as much time as hardcore raiding.

Legally acquiring it, yes.

Which is why most people wil obtain it from goldsellers, if this retarded feature goes live.
Goldseller get it from hacking people's accounts, except when they run farmbots that make it impossible for normal players to farm ores etc.

So yeah, this is a retarded way of stimulating the illegal stuff that ruins the game for decent players.